


The Light in the Heart

by cassyl



Series: A Haunted House [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Alternate Universe - Supernatural, Case Fic, Ghosts, M/M, Murder Mystery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-28
Updated: 2013-08-28
Packaged: 2017-12-24 22:58:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/945685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassyl/pseuds/cassyl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“And this is what you do, haunt crime scenes and help the dead cross over?”</p><p>On holiday in a Scottish castle hotel, John witnesses a murder and meets a very unusual detective.</p><p>For anyone concerned about the character death warning, the lovely snogandagrope may have put it best: "this is the kind of Major Character Death that has no sads in it at all!!"</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Light in the Heart

“Maybe you should take a holiday,” Harry had suggested. “Get out to the country or something.”

“What would I do out in the country, Harry?” John asked, his fingers tightening around the handle of his cane. “Go hiking?”

Harry had the good grace to look embarrassed, at least. “I just think you could do with a bit of a break.” She hesitated, and he wanted to tell her, _No, stop, let’s not have this conversation,_ but she went on. “I know coming back has been difficult for you and I won’t be a twat and pretend I understand even the slightest sliver of what this must be like for you, but . . . I can see you’re having a hard time, is all, and maybe some peace and quiet, some time to think, would do you good.”

Privately, John thought that peace and quiet and time to think were his problem in the first place, but he had to admit that Harry had a point. He was not adjusting well. That much was obvious—to him, to Harry, and certainly to his shrink, who gave him breathing exercises and kept trying to encourage him to write a bloody blog about his life, as if he had one at all. He was angry all the time, at everything—drivers, pedestrians, television news presenters, the bloody chip-and-pin machines at Asda—this ever-present, objectless seething he couldn’t seem to shake. He’d spent most of that afternoon gritting his teeth and trying not to hear his kitchen faucet dripping. It was by any measure a bit not good. 

So he’d started looking for budget holiday rentals and minibreak packages—more, he told himself, to appease Harry than because he really wanted to go, but he couldn’t help thinking that change might be just what he needed. 

In the end, he booked a dilapidated little cottage up in the north of Scotland, figuring he could get some fishing in. He hadn’t fished since he was a boy and didn’t much care for fish, but the cottage was within his price range and the airfare was on special discount.

Harry took one look at the photo of the place and said, “Oh, John, no.”

They had a row about it—one of their old standards, Harry trying to throw money at a problem, John too proud and too stubborn to accept her help. John was just pleased to have the opportunity to do a bit of shouting. In the end, Harry proposed that John should keep his airline tickets and she would pay for him to spend a long weekend at one of those castle hotels she’d found not far away. “Look, it’s not even that fancy,” she said, showing him the website. And John had to acknowledge that it wasn’t as horrible as he’d expected. It was nice—certainly nicer than anything he could afford on his own—but it wasn’t the posh luxury resort he’d feared it would be. It looked more like a private home than an antiseptic hotel, and John found it sort of charming, actually, the way there were priceless family heirlooms cheek-by-jowl with ugly, impersonal hotel upholstery. So he’d agreed.

Which was how he found himself standing in the hallway of a once-great stately home, holding a bucket of ice, staring down a crowd of hotel guests milling around nervously and blocking his way back to his room.

“Excuse me,” he said to the backs of the gathered crowd. They were most of them in their dressing gowns, the doors to their own rooms standing open as they stared at something a little ways down the corridor. He wondered what could have gotten everyone up out of bed at this hour of the night, but he couldn’t make out from their murmuring what had happened. “Excuse me,” he said again, louder this time.

The crowd parted slightly, but before John could get through, a porter pushed his way past the crowd in John’s direction. “Look,” John said to him, “could you tell me what’s going on. Only my room’s through there and I—”

The porter brushed right past him and promptly threw up in the little rubbish bin next to the lift. He paused, shoulders heaving, and then threw up again.

It struck John for the first time that there might be something really wrong here. “Is there anything I can do?” John asked the man. “I’m a doctor, I could—”

“Don’t bother,” said a lazy voice behind him.

“Sorry?” John turned around to find himself being watched by a tall, dark-haired man in a long coat who was leaning indolently against the wall. He was standing quite close, though John hadn’t noticed him before, or heard him come up.

“They’re all idiots,” the man said, as if this clarified things. “They’re not paying attention.”

“I just wanted to get back to my room . . .”

The tall man pushed off the wall with a graceful roll of his hips that seemed to John altogether indecent. “Come on, I know somewhere you can wait until this all blows over.”

John glanced back down the hall in the direction of his room, but there was obviously no chance of him getting back there any time soon, so John put down his bucket of ice and followed the handsome man to the lift. An elderly couple in their dressing gowns had just hit the call button and stood conferring in low, worried voices as they waited. 

“What’s happened, anyway?” John asked as the lift arrived and they all stepped inside.

“There’s been a murder,” his companion said, quite matter-of-factly.

“A _what_?”

On the other side of the lift, the elderly couple did not seem as surprised by this news as John thought they ought to be—as he himself was. In fact, they gave no indication of having heard it at all.

“I should go back upstairs, they’ll need a doctor, I could—help.” He reached out for the button, intending to return the lift to his floor, but the other man knocked his hand away.

“They don’t need your help,” he said sharply. Then, more gently, he added, “Anyway, there’s no need for you to subject yourself to that.”

“I’ve seen worse,” he said, taken aback by this stranger’s delicacy, however misplaced. The other man gave him a curious, almost sympathetic look that made John feel tense between the shoulder blades. He didn’t need this man’s pity. 

Just then the lift arrived at the ground floor, and to change the subject, John asked, “Who are you anyway?”

“Sherlock Holmes,” said his companion, without extending his hand to shake.

“John,” John said automatically, then added, “Watson.”

Sherlock Holmes nodded as if he already knew.

“What are you doing in Scotland, Mr. Holmes? Just visiting, or do you make it a habit of hanging about at crime scenes and picking up strange men?”

“Something like that,” he said, striding briskly across the lobby. John was about to apologize—really, a man had just been murdered, who _flirted_ at a crime scene?—when Sherlock added, “And, please, just Sherlock.”

They were headed in the direction of the hotel bar. “Is the bar even still open?”

“Until two,” Sherlock confirmed. 

The place was a dark, cavelike room adjoining the restaurant, and it was almost entirely empty, save for a couple talking quietly over their drinks at the bar. The bartender was doing sidework at the far end of the bar, obviously trying to give the couple some space. Sherlock, however, sat down just a few seats over.

“Shouldn’t we maybe—” John nodded in the direction of the couple, who were holding hands and whispering to one another.

“I promise you, the newlyweds won’t notice us,” Sherlock said with obvious distaste, settling his coat dramatically around himself. Judging by the intensity of the couple’s eye contact, John suspected Sherlock was right and, after another moment’s hesitation, joined him at the bar.

“And you’re here by yourself for a long weekend,” Sherlock said.

“What?”

“Just saving time on the small talk,” Sherlock explained, although this explained nothing at all.

“How did you—?”

“Obvious.” Sherlock rolled his eyes.

“It’s not . . . obvious to me,” John insisted.

With a sigh, Sherlock laid it out: “You’re clearly not here with anyone else, or you wouldn’t have been so keen to follow me downstairs when I suggested it. It’s also obvious that you’re only here for a short period of time. The state of your shoes—high quality leather, well-cared for but quite old, meaning you did have some money at some point but don’t any longer—says you can’t afford a place like this, at least not for very long, so a short trip, possibly a gift from a wealthier friend or family member, perhaps someone who felt you deserved a bit of a rest after being invalided home from . . . was it Afghanistan or Iraq?”

“Afghanistan,” John answered, half-dazed. “I’m not even going to ask how you knew _that_.”

Sherlock smirked, pleased with himself. “Do you want anything?” Sherlock asked.

Under normal circumstances, a murder next-door to his hotel room would have been the perfect excuse for a drink, but tonight had been strange enough without any intoxicants to help him along. “No, I’m . . . fine, actually.”

“Yes, I agree, better not to drink when one’s working—keeps the mind sharp.” When the barman looked over to check on the couple, Sherlock shook his head minutely, and the barman went back to stacking glasses.

“If you’re not drinking and I’m not drinking,” John asked, “what are we doing in the bar?”

Sherlock grinned. “Just a quiet place to talk, really.”

It really was splendid smile, John thought, as if John had asked just the question Sherlock had been waiting for. “Hang on,” he said then. “You said—working. Working at what, what is it you do?”

“I’m a consulting detective.”

“Oh, God, you really _do_ hang about at crimes scenes.”

Sherlock shot him a perplexed frown. “I said I did.”

“I thought you were . . . No, you know what, never mind, it doesn’t matter.” He shook his head. “Are you investigating this murder, then?”

Sherlock pretended to consider this. “Since the police are incompetent imbeciles who nine times out of ten can’t be trusted to see things that are _right in front of their faces_ , yes, I thought I might.”

John laughed. He couldn’t help it. Sherlock was so indignant, as if police incompetence were a perpetual source of annoyance, and John had a brief flash of amused sympathy for him. For someone who was so intensely observant—who’d known everything about John, and about the honeymooners down the bar, and probably about everyone he ever met—it must, John thought, be an ordeal to work with ordinary, unobservant people. 

“In fact,” Sherlock said, “I thought I might start with you.”

John leaned back, surprised. “Me?”

“Well, you were on the floor when it happened. Your room is right there. Perhaps you saw something, heard a noise?”

John tried to think back. He’d gone to bed early in the hopes of actually getting a good night’s rest, but a nightmare had woken him up around half-twelve, and, unable to get back to sleep, he’d gotten dressed again and gone out for some ice. He didn’t remember much about actually getting the ice, just remembered coming back to the crowd in front of his door, but he’d been on auto-pilot, still-half asleep.

And yet, there was something else, something niggling at him . . . 

“There was some sort of loud noise, a . . .” 

“Yes?” Sherlock said.

There was a twinge in his back—he must’ve slept on it badly, and he shrugged his shoulders uneasily, trying to dispel the tension. “Two shots, a double-tap, one right after the other.”

“Gunshots.”

The realization hit him sharply. “Yes, it must’ve been.” He shook his head. “I don’t know how I didn’t put it together until now, but I . . . I’d know that sound anywhere.”

“That’s—good, John, very good.”

“That must’ve been around quarter to one, or so. I remember the clock when I got up said half-twelve.”

Somewhere in the adjoining restaurant, a light came on.

“The other good thing about the bar,” Sherlock said abruptly, glancing over his shoulder, “is that it’s adjacent to the restaurant.”

“I’m pretty sure the kitchen is closed now.”

“Yes, which makes it the ideal place to interview witnesses.”

John was about to ask what Sherlock meant when he saw a rumpled man in a trench coat march into the restaurant, followed by two PCs escorting the porter who’d nearly run into John upstairs earlier.

“If we get a bit closer,” Sherlock said, gesturing John toward the door between the two rooms, “we’ll be able to listen in.”

“Couldn’t you just tell the police you’re an investigator, ask to sit in on their interviews?”

“They won’t work with me,” Sherlock said shortly.

“So when you say _consulting_ detective—”

“—I mean that I solve the cases first and then tip off the police, yes.”

“Right,” John said, standing up to follow Sherlock. “Just checking.”

“Come on, John, or we’ll miss what he’s saying.”

Sherlock as halfway across the room before he noticed John wasn’t following him. 

“John?”

“My . . .” John’s hand flexed for his cane, but it wasn’t there. What was more, his leg felt fine, supporting his weight perfectly. “I must’ve left it upstairs.”

Sherlock’s expression was difficult to read—it seemed almost tender, something bittersweet and sympathetic, though John couldn’t imagine why.

“Never mind, it’s fine. I’ll go back for it later.” And as he jogged to catch up with Sherlock, he realized he wasn’t in any pain at all.

Together they crept over to the door of the restaurant, which was near enough to the table that they could hear what was being said but still far enough away that they were hidden in shadow.

“Someone called with a noise complaint,” the porter was saying. He still looked peaky, John noticed. Some people handled seeing dead bodies better than others. “Actually, we had a couple of complaints, what sounded like a real knock-down, drag-out fight. It was only me and Beth on duty tonight, so I went up to see what the matter was. And then, just as I got out the lift, I heard ‘em, two shots, right on top of each other.”

John flexed his shoulders, still trying to relieve the ache in his back. “That must’ve been the shots I heard,” he whispered.

“What did you do then?” the DI in charge prompted.

“The door was locked, so I used my card—we have universal keys, you know. And there he was, on the floor, looking like someone had just . . . cut his strings. There wasn’t anyone else in the room, just him. But the window was open, so I ran over to see if I could spot who’d done it, only I couldn’t see anything. It gets so dark out here at night.” He shifted uncomfortable in his chair, fiddling with the tablecloth. “It was only then I realized I could still hear him breathing—just real faint, hardly anything at all. So I went over and tried to—but there was so much blood, and I—” He swallowed. “I called down to the desk, told Beth to call 999, and then I . . . I got the pillows off the bed and I sorta lifted his head up. I dunno why I did that . . .”

“Trying to keep it elevated,” John guessed quietly to Sherlock. “Would’ve been good thinking, if it wasn’t a chest wound.” Beside him, Sherlock’s expression was tense, and he seemed to be listening closely.

“It was stupid, really,” the porter said. “I could see it wasn’t gonna make any difference. He was bleeding a lot. But, after that, I just—I waited with him there until you all arrived, and then I went out into the corridor and was sick.”

John felt bad for the uncharitable thoughts he’d had toward the man earlier. He’d just been through what would’ve been a harrowing experience for anyone, let alone a civilian, and John had been cross because he couldn’t get back to his hotel room, which wasn’t even the poor man’s fault.

On the other hand, Sherlock’s sympathy seemed to have dried up. “The oaf,” he hissed. “The bloody—” He kicked viciously at a chair, jostling the whole table.

Everyone in the vicinity—the porter, the police, and the newlyweds at the bar—glanced up in surprise, and John shoved Sherlock deeper into the shadows. He was sure they’d been seen, and he heard the DI say, “Would one of you go have a look around?”

John and Sherlock stood holding their breath in the darkness behind the door while one of the PCs got up and walked heavily over to the doorway. She stepped into the bar and looked both ways before saying to the barman, “Seen anyone else in here?”

The barman shrugged, and John had to hold his hand over his mouth to stifle a sigh of relief. He waited for the PC’s footsteps to recede back into the restaurant before tugging on Sherlock’s sleeve and whispering, “We should go.” 

Sherlock gave a jerky nod and followed John stiffly out of the bar, keeping to the dark edges of the room until they were out of sight.

Once they’d made it into the lobby, John said, “What in hell was that about?”

Sherlock gave one short, tight, shake of his head. John could see from the tense set of his mouth that he was still livid, though he was obviously trying hard to reign it in.

“No, seriously, Sherlock,” he said slowly, “what’s the matter?”

“You—” Sherlock took a deep breath, squared his shoulders. “He was still alive. That idiot was running around looking out windows when a man was _dying on the floor right in front of him_.”

“Sherlock . . .”

“What sort of—of—”

“Sherlock, listen to me.” He grabbed Sherlock’s arm without thinking, giving him a sharp shake. This seemed to startle the other man, and he looked down at John, his colorless eyes wide. “There was nothing he could’ve done. From what he described, that man would’ve been dead no matter what. That amount of blood loss . . .” John inclined his head. “If anything, he did that man a kindness. He made sure he didn’t die alone.”

Sherlock didn’t reply. He was still staring at John, his gaze so intense, so open that John was almost embarrassed by it.

“What?” They were still standing so close, John could’ve reached out and . . .

“You’re incredible.”

John glanced away, most definitely embarrassed now. “Anyway, what are we going to do now?”

“Hmm?”

“The investigation?” John prompted. “What’s our next move?”

“Ah, yes, of course.” Sherlock took a conscientious step backwards. “Security first, I think. I want to see if there’s any CCTV footage of the corridor—if the police haven’t confiscated it already, that is. Then we’ll want to have a look around outside. That porter may be an idiot, but it _is_ worth checking to see if there’s any way the shooter could’ve escaped out the window.”

John could find no reason to object to this plan, and followed after Sherlock, who seemed to know exactly where he was going. At the far end of the lobby was a door marked ‘Authorized Personnel Only,’ through which a woman in hotel uniform—who must be the other employee, Beth, the porter had mentioned—emerged just as they were walking up.

John fully expected her to stop them, but Sherlock strode through the door with such an air of authority that she didn’t give him a second glance, and John went in after him. 

At the end of the hall was the security office. John tried the handle, but the door wouldn’t budge. Sherlock glanced at him and said, “Keep a lookout.”

John frowned—not really out of any moral opprobrium but from a feeling that one ought to at least deliberate a bit before breaking and entering. But it wasn’t as if he was about to back out now, so he turned away and positioned himself so as to shield Sherlock from view, should anyone come down the hall.

A moment later, the lock clicked and Sherlock pulled open the door, gesturing for John to join him.

“How did you—?” Sherlock was already standing inside the room, his hand on the interior handle, though he could barely have had time to step inside. “That door was locked.”

Sherlock raised his eyebrows, imperious, as though asking how John dared to doubt his prowess. “Not to me.”

And, well, John thought, that level of arrogance seemed about par for the course with Sherlock, but he didn’t much fancy standing out in the hall arguing and getting caught, so he stepped inside.

Sherlock seemed to have experience working with surveillance equipment, because he found the right CCTV feed immediately and wasted no time cuing up the video. He pulled the footage back to 12:30 AM and let it run. As the minutes ticked by in fast-forward, nothing moved in the hallway. No one came or went, until a little before one, when the porter arrived by lift. There was no sound, but they could tell the moment the gunshots rang out, because the porter broke into a run, and a moment later, a balding man poked his head out of the room next door.

“Wait,” John said. “Wait . . .”

Sherlock glanced over his shoulder, his expression carefully blank. “What?”

“Go back. There was no one in the hall.”

“Ye-es,” Sherlock said slowly.

“So . . . you should’ve seen me go out for ice. I was only gone a few minutes before the shots were fired, I must’ve just missed it. But—”

“No doubt it was earlier than you thought,” Sherlock said, and switched the television back to the live footage with a sharp twist of his wrist.

“It was 12:30 when I woke up, I remember looking at the clock.”

“Witnesses misremember things all the time,” Sherlock snapped. “Am I really expected to take your word as Gospel? Because, as I recall, you didn’t remember hearing gunshots until I prompted you. ”

John blinked. It was true, he hadn’t remembered hearing the shots. But he’d been so sure about the time . . . Then again, he knew very well that stress, trauma, did strange things to people’s memories. “You’re right, I’m sorry, I—”

Sherlock straightened up from where he’d been leaning over the television. His posture, John thought, was stiffer than it had been before, his expression more distant. “We’ve seen enough here. Let’s go.” And without giving John a chance to reply, he swept out of the office and back down the hall.

John jogged after him, stretching his legs to keep up. It felt good to run properly—he’d almost forgotten what it was like to have full use of his legs. In fact, he felt pretty fantastic all around, except for the crick in his back, which still hadn’t gone away. It must’ve been the adrenaline, he figured, all this running around with Sherlock giving him a bit of a battle high. He’d always thrived on conflict, after all. It felt good to get back into the fray.

“Keep up, John,” Sherlock said from across the lobby.

Together they cut down another hallway and ducked out an open fire door, no doubt propped open so the staff could sneak out for cigarette breaks. Sherlock walked purposefully out into the dark, navigating the gravel paths with soundless grace while John plodded along behind him. They rounded the side of the building and Sherlock strode past the carefully manicured hedges to stand out on the lawn some distance away from the building. 

In the black, the building looked far removed from its tidy modern existence as a posh hotel. John could see it gracing the cover of a gothic novel—something with secret passages and vengeful ghosts, no doubt. 

Sherlock, however, was not admiring the architecture, but rather inspecting the wall keenly, his eyed narrowed against the dark.

A couple of the windows on the third floor were lit, and John peered upwards, wondering which of those windows was his. Only one window was open, though, and this John took to be the murdered man’s.

“No balcony or ledge he could have escaped on,” Sherlock was saying. “No signs that a grappling hook or any sort of ladder were used to scale the building, although the thought that the killer could’ve retrieved one quickly enough is patently absurd. What did he do, run off with a three-storey ladder on his back?”

Sherlock stalked back over to the building and leaned down over the hedges at the base of the wall, his face nearly pressed into their leaves.

“Er, Sherlock . . . ?”

“I’m examining the hedge for any indication of an impact,” Sherlock said curtly. “It’s not inconceivable that someone could have walked away from a fall that height. That is what you were going to ask, isn’t it?”

“Actually, it wasn’t.”

Sherlock straightened up, surprised. “Oh?”

“It’s just . . . I was wondering . . . Well, why?”

“Why what?”

“Why kill him?” John shook his head. “We’ve been running around trying to figure out who shot this man, but I can’t help asking myself _why_ he was shot at all. It seems possible that if we can figure out _why_ someone would go to the trouble of killing some hapless tourist in the middle of the night, we might have a better understanding of _who_ would’ve had a motive to do it.”

As Sherlock stared at him, John could fairly see the thoughts racing through his head. “Who indeed,” he murmured. Then, abruptly, he sprang into action, clapping his hands together and taking John by the shoulders. “Brilliant, John, thank you. I need to see the hotel register,” he said and took of at a run back toward the entrance. 

“Er . . . No problem.”

By the time John caught up with Sherlock, he was reading the guest register on the front desk upside down, while behind the counter Beth was occupied talking to a police officer.

“What are you looking for?” John asked, stepping up alongside Sherlock.

Sherlock didn’t reply, his eyes racing across the page. “Ah-ha! Jeremy Barlow, room 318.”

“318?” John echoed, but Sherlock was already dashing off toward the stairs, bounding up them three at a time, so that John, in what was starting to become a trend, had to scramble to catch him up.

Sherlock, rather uncharacteristically, was waiting for him at the landing. He was watching John climb the stairs, observing in his every motion with an intensity John didn’t quite understand.

When John reached the top of the stairs, he saw that the crowd that had gathered earlier in the night had been cleared. Either everyone was being questioned downstairs, or they’d all been sent back to bed. It occurred to John—and, really, it should have occurred to him sooner—that both he and Sherlock could be considered prime suspects. Especially Sherlock, about whom John really knew next to nothing. But he couldn’t believe that the handsome, mercurial man standing in front of him, looking at him as if he wanted to memorize every line on John’s face, could really be a killer. Sherlock was peculiar, it was true, but he was also bright and brilliant and he made John feel more alive than he had in months.

“What is it?” John asked.

Sherlock blinked, looked away. “I think, perhaps, I ought to do this next part myself.”

John glanced down the hall, where one of the doors halfway down had a uniformed officer standing guard out front. “Do you think I’ll be squeamish about sneaking into a crime scene, or about the blood?” he asked. “Because the answer is neither.”

Sherlock’s answer was quiet when it came. “I don’t doubt your mettle, John, but this is . . . different.”

“I don’t care,” John said. “I’m with you in this a hundred percent, no matter what.”

Still Sherlock did not move, did not explain.

“I’m serious, Sherlock.” He shrugged. “I know I only just met you, and I know that maybe it sounds a bit mad, but I haven’t felt this good since I came home from Afghanistan, and I don’t know what it is about you, but wherever you’re going, I want to be there, too.”

Sherlock looked—stricken, that was the word for it. John understood that maybe his little declaration wasn’t what Sherlock had been expecting to hear—and he could accept that, in all likelihood, tonight’s adventure didn’t mean to Sherlock what it did to John—but Sherlock looked as though John had slapped him full in the face.

“John,” Sherlock said at last, choosing his words very carefully, “what I do—the existence I’ve chosen for myself, it’s . . . lonely. Often times, I’m the only one I can rely on, the only one who _sees_ what’s really going on. And I can’t deny that from time to time I’ve wished there might be someone else who’d want to stay with me and share in my work, but . . .” His lips twitched and he shook his head. “But I wouldn’t wish this on anyone. I chose this, but you don’t have to.”

John swallowed against the thick feeling in his throat. “I know you didn’t know me then, but I was . . . coming apart before tonight—before I met you. Harry—my sister—suggested I come up here for a little peace and quiet, some rest. But the thing is, I don’t want to rest. I want—I want more of this, more adventure, more danger, more sneaking into restricted areas and tracking down murderers. I want _you_.”

And then, because he might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, John pulled Sherlock down and kissed him soundly on the mouth. Sherlock’s lips were tense against his for a moment, before they softened and slipped open with a quiet gasp.

“John,” Sherlock breathed into his mouth, and the slide of his tongue seemed to be the first thing John had ever felt. Sherlock’s hand gripped John’s shoulders, pulling him closer for a moment before pushing him gently away. The light brush of Sherlock’s lips softened the separation, and Sherlock leaned his forehead against John’s. “I’d like nothing better,” he said. “But just—wait a bit, and see if you still feel that way later.”

John couldn’t imagine what could possibly happen to change his mind, but he agreed anyway.

“Good. Yes. All right.” Sherlock visibly pulled himself together, wiping the shockish expression from his face and straightening his back. John’s own back felt worse than ever, the ache spreading through his chest, and he decided absently that he might have to shell out for a massage when all this was over—or maybe, he thought hopefully, Sherlock would be willing to indulge him.

“We might as well get this over with,” said Sherlock grimly.

“Hey.” John nudged Sherlock gently with his shoulder. “Whatever happens, it’ll be all right.”

Sherlock nodded, and led John down the corridor toward the crime scene. The ache in John’s chest intensified, clamping down on his lungs so that it became hard to breath. He pressed his fist to his chest and tried not to double over.

When he straightened up, he realized they were standing in front of the dead man’s door, which was crisscrossed off with caution tape. 

“320,” John said, although the pain in his chest made it next to impossible to speak. Sherlock had said 318. Jeremy Barlow, 318. “This can’t be right.” He turned to the PC on watch at the door and said, “What’s going on here?”

“She can’t hear you,” Sherlock said gently.

He couldn’t breath. There was something wrong. “This isn’t right.”

“Come on.” With one arm around John’s shoulders, Sherlock led him through the door. “We’re almost finished.”

The room was a mess—furniture knocked over, glass smashed, and the blood, there was so much. John felt his lungs collapse in his chest. His legs stopped working, and it was only Sherlock’s arm around him that kept him standing.

Sherlock leaned in close and John could feel the brush of Sherlock’s dark curls against his cheek. “Stay with me, John,” he whispered. “If that’s what you want, stay with me.”

The pain was unbearable, obliterating. He could feel it pulling him, trying to bear him away from this—from his life, from the place where his body had lain and bled out on this ugly hotel carpet, his head cradled in some stranger’s lap.

He remember, then, in a wild rush that would have made him sick if he’d had a body any more to betray him: 

_He woke at 12:30 from a tearing nightmare, his face wet and his hands shaking. He got dressed in the dark and felt around for the ice bucket because he just needed to be away from that dream and the paralyzing fear it had brought with it. Then there was a soft hiss behind him, and he turned around to see a squat, balding man standing in his room, silhouetted by the moonlight coming in through the window. For a moment, they’d both stared at one another, and then the man attacked him. They grappled fiercely—John wasn’t about to go down without a fight—until a blow sent John twisting to the ground. He fell flat on his face on the carpet, and he was struggling to get up when he heard it: two shots, a double tap, one right after the other._

The pain was willing him to leave. _It’s time_ , it seemed to say. _It’s time to rest._

“No,” John gasped, or tried to. “No.”

 _Let go_ , it urged him, at the same time that it was trying to tear him apart. _This can be over. You can be at peace._

But John didn’t want to be at peace. He wanted to stand beside Sherlock and watch the mercury of his eyes shift, to kiss him and argue with him and help him solve crimes the police were too thick to figure out on their own. More than that, he wanted to understand _why _this had happened to him—why he’d died, why he'd survived everything else only to end up here, why someone balding son of a bitch had gone to the trouble of killing a hapless tourist in the middle of the night.__

__And so when the pain pulled at him, he simply refused to go._ _

__It got worse before it got better, but slowly, slowly, the pain began to recede and John could feel the world coming into focus once again. Sherlock was there, still holding him up, still with him._ _

__“You’re here,” Sherlock said quietly beside him. “You did it, John. You’re still here.”_ _

__“There’s a door,” he gasped when he could finally shape the words. “At the back of the wardrobe, there’s a door.”_ _

__Together, they stepped over to the wardrobe and stood contemplating it for a moment._ _

__“Would you care to do the honors?” Sherlock asked._ _

__It was strange, the way John had to concentrate all his energy on making his fingertips as real as possible in order to open the wardrobe. But he got the doors open and he managed to feel around on the back panel until there was a soft hiss and the panel sighed open just enough to allow John a view of the room._ _

__On the other side of the wall, a squat, balding man was trying to re-wrap the bandage a rather grisly cut on his arm—sustained, John recalled with no small satisfaction, when John smashed a drinking glass against his forearm. A briefcase stood open on the table in front of him, a small ceramic urn nestled in its soft foam lining._ _

__John leaned forward to get a better look at the vase and realized that the entire upper half of his body had passed through the wall. It seemed that if he wasn’t paying attention, he was almost entirely immaterial. Being dead, it turned out, had certain advantages._ _

__John’s killer, Jeremy Barlow, room 318, was speaking into a mobile phone he held wedged between his chin and shoulder and did not seem to have noticed either the panel moving or John’s presence in the room._ _

__“I know that,” Barlow said through gritted teeth, “but I can’t bloody leave until the police are through with their investigation. They’ve got the whole damn place on lock-down.”_ _

__“Then find another way out,” the voice on the other end of the line informed him curtly._ _

__John was pleased to discover that being dead had also greatly improved his hearing. In addition to the voice on the phone, he could hear the insects talking to each other in the hedges down below the window and the PC whistling softly to himself out in the hallway._ _

__“Well I didn’t exactly plan for this, did I?” snapped Barlow. “You told me that room was going to be empty.”_ _

__The strangeness of standing in the middle of a room without being seen had not yet fully settled on John. He had the impulse to wave a hand in front of the Barlow’s face, to snap his fingers beside his ears._ _

__“Yes, I’ve got the vase,” Barlow was saying to the man on the phone. “Lot of trouble for a bit of tat, if you ask me.”_ _

__Sticking his head back through the wall, John said, “What do we do now?”_ _

__Sherlock smiled proudly at him, as though John was the most extraordinary thing he had ever seen. “I find that a loud noise or a crashing object is usually sufficient enough to alert the necessary parties while remaining a reasonable level of apparent coincidence.”_ _

__John was not practiced enough at moving objects to do it alone, so together they set the wardrobe toppling forward, exposing the passage between the rooms with a great crash._ _

__“Oi!” shouted Barlow, dropping his mobile in shock, and out in the corridor the PC was calling for backup as he struggled to get the door to John’s room open._ _

__John and Sherlock stood back and watched, then, unobserved, as the PC barreled into the room and discovered the stunned-looking killer standing there gaping at the formerly-secret passage. They leaned back against the wall and watched the PC wrestle Barlow to the ground, and as the room filled with uniformed officers, Sherlock slipped his hand into John’s and said, “You did really well.” After a pause, he added, “For your first time out.”_ _

__John laughed, and it was a delight to still be able to do it. “So we’re ghosts.”_ _

__Sherlock nodded. “We’re ghosts.”_ _

__“You couldn’t have just told me that?”_ _

__“That isn’t how it works,” Sherlock replied. “Everyone has to work it out for himself. But you really did very well, John—almost record time.”_ _

__John had the feeling he knew who held that record. “And this is what you do, haunt crime scenes and help the dead cross over?”_ _

__“Or not cross over, in your case,” Sherlock pointed out._ _

__John shrugged. “I’m crap at peace and quiet, anyway. I’d much prefer this.”_ _

__Sherlock was smiling, and it seemed impossible, but the smile made him even more beautiful than ever. Then John remembered that he was, in fact, a ghost, and that perhaps it was possible after all._ _

__“So how does one _become_ a ghost, exactly?” John asked._ _

__“Apparently,” Sherlock explained, “in order to move on, you have to make peace with your life. Those who don’t, or can’t, for whatever reason, are what people call ghosts. Some of us, like you and I, simply choose not to go.”_ _

__“How did you . . . ?” John felt suddenly bashful about asking, though it seemed silly to be worried about propriety when he could _walk through walls_._ _

__“Die?”_ _

__“Well . . . yeah.”_ _

__“Cocaine overdose,” Sherlock said._ _

__“Drugs?” John said, incredulous. “You?”_ _

__“Entirely accidental,” Sherlock assured him. “I got careless.”_ _

__John shoved Sherlock’s shoulder. “You bloody idiot.”_ _

__Sherlock tipped his head, acknowledging the possibility that he had, in fact, been an idiot. “Anyway, I don’t regret it. All I’ve ever wanted is more of this.”_ _

__John nodded. “That’s what I want, too.”_ _

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Virginia Woolf's wonderful short story ["A Haunted House"](http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/w91h/chapter1.html#chapter1).
> 
> Extraordinary thanks to [PrettyArbitrary](http://archiveofourown.org/users/PrettyArbitrary), who got excited about this idea and encouraged me to make it work, and also to [earlgreytea68](https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlgreytea68/pseuds/earlgreytea68) for having the amazing idea for an [AU ficathon](http://earlgreytea68.livejournal.com/420191.html), which is more or less all I've ever wanted out of life. I know neither of you know me from Adam, but this fic was a pure delight to write and it absolutely would never have happened without either of you, so thank you.
> 
> And in case anyone is wondering, my soundtrack while writing this was David Lang's phenomenal chamber ensemble work _Death Speaks_ , featuring Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond and Bryce Dessner of The National, and if you haven't heard it, you should go do so immediately.


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